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Apple to EU – what are loopholes for?

I’ve never liked Apple or Steve Jobs, the brilliant marketing entrepreneur who once ran the company.
He’s dead now, and one mustn’t speak ill of the dead, or so they say. I’ve never understood why, but that’s the social more.

In the meanwhile, ‘Apple paid a trifling 2% corporation tax outside US,’ was the headline to one of my posts, which went on:

My post continued, “His company “paid less than 2% corporation tax on its profits outside the US, its filing with US regulators has shown,” says the BBC, going on:

“The company paid $713m (£445m) in the year to 29 September on foreign pre-tax profits of $36.8bn, a rate of 1.9%.

But Apple wasn’t the only company enjoying ridiculously low rates of overseas tax. Can you say Starbucks, Facebook and Google, et al?

But what’s the point of being filthy rich if you have to pay taxes like everyone else?

Now, “Margrethe Vestager is the European Union’s antitrust commissioner who handed Apple a $14.5-billion back taxes bill in August — the largest tax penalty for a U.S. tech company,” says CNBC, adding, “asked how she got to such a big tax bill for Apple, Vestager first explained that the investigation was regarding the two tax rulings allowing Apple to put huge profits into Europe, “with no employees, no premises, no read activities,” leaving only a “tiny fraction of their profits generated in Europe” to ever be taxed.